March 31

The best of March 2021…

• Fully vaccinated (which means a sign of relief at being around my parents)
• Plans for a full day, 5 days a week return of students next week
• The weather has quickly turned to Spring and I love it! I am not really an outdoor kind of person, but I love to go for walks and ride my bike. Plus I just love the anticipation of warmer weather.
• Lots of books read this month, just finished The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and it is soooo good!
• Beginning to feel optimistic that we might have some normalcy this summer. Fingers crossed!
• 97% of my neighbors have FINALLY put away their Christmas decorations. Saw 2 houses today with things still up so I am not totally dropping the subject yet!
• I did not forget to Slice at all this year! Woohoo!

March 30

I’m in the mood to cook today! Actually, I really love to cook/bake when I have time for it. During the school year, during the week it becomes a chore, something I have to rush home and do every day. Thankfully my husband is easy and is always up for last minute take out or a frozen pizza if I am just not in the mood, but for some reason I don’t really like doing that. I grew up in a traditional household, I feel like I am supposed to make dinner every night.

Last year, for the 5 months I was home during COVID, I got into the habit of making lunch and dinner every day. In addition to the ridiculous amount of baking I was doing. This week I have jumped right back in with the 2 meals a day and more baking.

This winter I was on the hunt for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. I love a good, warm chocolate chip cookie. I think I finally found it. Today is my 3rd batch. I bake some and freeze others in cookie balls so that we can easily pop them in the oven when we are in the mood.

Here is the recipe if you want to try them out. By the way, the recipe says it makes 12 cookies. I used my small cookie scoop and got 39 cookies out of this recipe and they bake to a normal sized cookie. Not sure how big those 12 cookies were…

1/2 cup sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter melted

(whisk these all together)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 egg

(add these 2 and whisk again)

Sift in 1 and 1/4 cup of flour and 1 teaspoon baking soda

fold together and then fold in 8 ounces of chocolate chips and 1/4 cup finely chopped pecans

Bake at 350 for 12+ minutes depending on your oven

So good!

March 29

Spring Break COVID style…

Today’s excitement is brought to you by cleaning out the garage and putting out the Spring decor on the front porch. Living the dream over here!

I also received the following text from my 26 year old niece in Texas (who I should be visiting this week); “We won a house!”. Um… what? Please elaborate. That was my response. She and her BF have been living with my brother and SIL since November when their outrageous lease on their apartment ended and they decided to look for a house in the burbs. What she meant was that they finally won a bid on a house. The market there is ridiculous and houses are going for about $50,000 over asking and they have lost out on so many. One clarifying text later and 20 photos of the new place and now I have another reason to go visit Texas soon.

March 28

I feel fine. Still not sure which COVID test to believe, I am quarantining for the week. I also really kind of need to go grocery shopping. I could send Mike, but we decided to play a game instead. This week is “HOW MANY MEALS CAN WE MAKE FROM THINGS IN THE FREEZER AND PANTRY?” Occasionally we play this game to try and get rid of things. I am pleasantly surprised at how much we can make for both lunch and dinner. Soup, pasta, breakfast stuff, quiche, rice dish, frozen pizza, mac and cheese. Piece of cake. It may not be the healthiest week ever, but I would have been eating out all week on my trip.

By the way… it is only Sunday and I am bored already. Luckily the weather should be decent for much of the week (today is super windy and chilly) so I ordered my new bike online and Mike picked it up today. At least I can get outside walking and riding the new bike this week! I have also read 1 book already and looking forward to starting another today. I am kind of a book nerd having nothing to do but read is kind of exciting.

I’m sure all of my posts this week will be as exciting as this one!

March 27

Things I should be doing today but am not… traveling.

My headache from Wednesday resulted in a positive test for COVID and then one that was negative. Confused? Me too.

I was supposed to leave early this morning with my parents and my sister and nephew to visit my brother in Texas. Not really knowing what those 2 tests meant and with my dad’s health being poor this year, I cancelled my trip. Not worth the risk.

Please pray for my sister who is now traveling alone with parents. I will owe her big time!

March 26

We met as most kids do, we just randomly found each other playing on the block. My twin sister and I were 5 and we met Kim and Cindy. Cindy was also 5 and Kim was 4. Almost 44 years later and we are still friends. All bridesmaids in each other’s weddings and the type of friends you could go months without talking to and pick right up where you left off.

Cindy moved to Texas right after she got married 25 years ago. She comes home once a year, we have gone there as well. Lots of texts and Facebook connections have made staying in touch much easier. Her oldest daughter was my flower girl when she was just 2. Yesterday that flower girl got married and I wasn’t able to be there. The decided to get married on the anniversary of meeting… which fell on a Thursday… 2 days before Spring Break… in Texas. I am sad that we weren’t there but aunt Kim came to the rescue sending tons of pictures.

Just being kind of nostalgic today thinking about how fortunate I am to have such an amazing group of friends.

March 25

The worst part is that I was unprepared for this.

It was just a headache. It started Tuesday night, was a bit better Wednesday morning, but as the day wore on it got much worse. So I went home. I just wanted to take some Tylenol and take a nap in the dark to make it better. I woke up to my phone ringing and the dreaded call. “Your principal reported that you have a headache and had to leave school. You will need to get a negative COVID test in order to return.” No rapid results so by the time I could get an appointment it really is useless, the results will not be back by tomorrow morning. Ugh, it NEVER occurred to me. I’m vaccinated so I didn’t even stop to think that this would happen. I would have stayed. Now I have an early spring break that I cannot enjoy because it completely stresses me out that I left so unprepared. I slapped together some review work for my students and need to remind myself that it is out of my control.

March 24

Same story, new Wednesday…

I have always been an early bird and now I am part of the early crew in my building. There are 3 of us who are there every day before 6:45. With a 40 minute commute, I usually try to leave around 6. It sounds awful when I say it out loud, but it really works out well. I get so much more done in the morning than any other time of the day. By the end of the school day I am just too tired to focus and end up spending a lot of time not really accomplishing anything.

All year, we have been asynchronous on Wednesdays with the students just working on their own if we choose. I usually meet with them a few times, have a few other meetings and then use the time to prep. Every Wednesday I tell myself to sleep in a bit, go easy in the morning and get to school whenever. No students, I have more time to work. Today is the last Wednesday for this. I was here at 6:35.

March 23

It’s like being married to a child some days…

My husband had a doctor appointment yesterday. Here is how the conversation went when I got home…

Me: How did everything go?

Him: All good. Blah, blah, blah. He was talking to me about ways to improve my health; getting more exercise, including more plant based meals into my diet.

Me: Really? Hmmm…

Him: (Reading from the visit notes) more fruits and vegetables, he listed a website with vegan recipes, I told him I would pass it on to you since I don’t really cook.

Me: Interesting…

Him: Why do you say that?

Me: You DON”T actually eat fruits and vegetables.

Him: Yes I do!

Me: An occasional salad does not count.

Him: I eat fruit! I sometimes put banana on my yogurt with granola.

Me: Hmmm…

Him: I liked those brussels sprouts you made!

Me: The ones with bacon? The ones you ate 1 or 2 of? He is talking about full meals with no meat or dairy products. No butter, no cheese.

Him: Oh, well, I would be open to trying something every now and then.

This should last for about 1 meal.

March 22

Oh Monday, I am so glad that the next 2 of you are days off!

Why are Mondays so rough? I woke at 4AM and knew I would not go back to sleep, but I did not want to get up. The weekend was so nice and relaxing. Maybe it is because this Monday starts off what is always the LONGEST week of the year… the week before Spring Break. I did some switching of our schedule this week to try and get some fun in. Science has been kind of boring in the classroom (so hard when it cannot be hands-on – not enough supplies for everyone to have their own) so I made the executive decision to do some STEM instead. A few Amazon orders later and I have STUFF for the kiddos to get their hands on and have fun with. Wish me luck!